FOR the banks it’s just business; it’s everyday, cold, monotonous even.

CITY centre traffic chaos and airport delays are two of the great curses of travelling and anything that can make them more bearable is to be welcomed.

THE grinding economic crisis is making life impossible for people in every layer of society but nowhere is the toll more telling than among low-income families on social welfare and amid Ireland’s new poor as mortgage holders face the financial squeeze.

HARDLY noticed in the latest crime data, the incidence of sex with minors rose to 106 last year compared with 82 cases in 2008.

WHETHER he said it or not the phrase sometimes attributed to Éamon de Valera – “a Catholic State for a Catholic people” – rang true, especially for non-Catholics, in this country for very many decades.

LAST year several high-ranking public employees were afforded the sanctuary offered by early retirement.

THE Labour Court’s rejection of air traffic controllers’ claims that the introduction of new technology does not represent normal ongoing change is another defeat for the trade union movement.

JUSTICE Minister Dermot Ahern told us yesterday that rapes, burglaries and robberies increased by almost 10% last year. While violent deaths dropped slightly, he said he was concerned at the high level of killings – 53 murders, two manslaughter cases and 25 people killed by dangerous driving.

Yesterday’s commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp in Poland was a timely reminder of the evil that can emerge if sectarianism and religious bigotry is allowed to go unchecked. A total of one million Jewish people perished in the camp from 1942 until its liberation in 1945.

There has been anguish and shock at the brevity of the four-year jail sentence imposed on Edwin Curry, who was convicted of 189 cases of indecent assault on nine girls between five and 15 years of age. He lured the young girls into a shed with sweets over a 21-year period.